Walking with Ghosts
by Laziness Incarnate
Summary: Every five years, Touya sees a ghost on May 5.


**Walking with Ghosts**

_"You mean it's true, Momma? It's not a ghost story?"_

"No, Akira-kun. It all happened, but most people have forgotten. I'll tell you the story. Once upon a time there lived a Go master named Sai..."

* * *

Touya first noticed the ghost when he was nineteen years old.

It was a pale wisp of a thing, formless and maddeningly elusive, something that could not be seen except out of the corner of the eye. When Touya looked directly at the spot where he thought the ghost should be--to the right and just above Shindou's shoulder--of course there was nothing there.

And of course this was Shindou, so that nothing had to mean everything.

But there was still a game to be won here, so Touya looked down at the board and lost himself in it. He played Go. Slowly, by degrees, it occurred to him that the ghost was watching the game unfold.

This time Touya did not raise his eyes. He waited patiently, as he had been taught to do, and he spoke through his Go, as it was the only thing he knew how to do.

Once the board was filled (Shindou won playing black, two moku with the komi) Touya looked up to declare his resignation. He saw that there was no trace of the ghost in Shindou's eyes or in his voice or over his shoulder. Shindou did not know.

They had their usual post-game argument and Touya went home without saying a word about what he had seen or what he had not seen. 

But as he was keying open the door to his empty house he heard a rustle like the sound of silk slipping against silk, the hush of secrets in the night. He looked up and saw koi flags raised to the wind.

The next day there was no ghost behind Shindou.

* * *

Touya saw the ghost again when he was twenty-four years old.

It had been five years since the first time, to the exact day. Five years is a long time. There had been Go to fill the years, and he had not thought of the ghost much at all in the time between.

But when it appeared to him again, a whiteness less tangible than spider's silk, he was sure that it was as real as the stones he held between his fingers. He had time on his side now.

"Shindou," he said suddenly, "what would you say if I told you that there's a ghost behind you?"

Shindou's head jerked upward and he stared at Touya, eyes wide and jaw slack, his breath short. Slowly, with reverent care, Shindou put his fan down on the table with shaking hands before craning his body to look behind him.

He searched for a long moment then turned back to face Touya.

"Stop lying," he said.

"I'm not lying. It's only there when we play Go--"

"Shut up. You're not allowed to say stuff like that, not today. I never knew you were such a bastard, Touya Akira."

Shindou's eyes were hard and flat and filled with greater fury than Touya had ever seen from all their past arguments.

They never did finish that game.

Touya left Shindou's apartment embroiled in his own cold fury, because he knew, he _knew_ that the ghost had something to do with Shindou's secrets, the secrets that he was supposedly going to share with Touya one day. Shindou had said it, hadn't he, _if you keep chasing my ghost_, so how could Touya possibly ever stop chasing the thing that had brought them together?

But when Touya put himself to bed that night he was calm enough to have this thought: the man that Shindou had become was incapable of doing anything with half a heart, and it was that man who had given him his promise. It was an airy promise full of escape clauses, of "maybes" and "somedays," but a promise nonetheless.

He assured himself that Shindou would apologize the next day ("Sorry I called you a lying bastard, Touya"), and he told himself Shindou would tell, eventually. Touya could be as patient as a ghost.

* * *

When Touya was twenty-nine years old, he began to understand why it was always on Children's Day that the ghost appeared.

There was nothing childish about the haunted look in Shindou's eyes, he knew. But he also knew that ghosts--no matter how young or how old, no matter how long they lived or in what way they died--ghosts still had wants. The single-mindedness of that want was something Touya could understand. Children's Day was not just for children.

He dreamt of the single-minded devotion to Go he had known as a child, before it became the thing that paid the bills and gave him impossible tournament schedules to arrange and his father's deteriorating health to worry about. He dreamt of a time when he would have died for Go, the purity of white stones, before responsibility and this clinginess to life made him long to be a ghost.

A ghost who appeared in the human world on the fifth day of the fifth month of every fifth year was a ghost who loved Go, who chose to stand behind Shindou as he laid down the stones with hands that were careworn and strong. Touya wished he could be that ghost.

Another five years, he thought tiredly. And then he looked at Shindou's hands again and at the willow-the-wisp hanging behind him and realized: of course it had to be Shindou.

This tiredness would pass, Touya knew. He loved Go; he would always love Go.

* * *

Touya did not see the ghost when he was thirty-four. Because on May 5th of that year, Shindou went to Innoshima. 

Shindou's mother told Touya over the phone that it was probably a mid-life crisis. "He said something about ghost hunting," she said, sounding perplexed. 

That night Touya dreamed strange dreams, of one white stone mixed among the black, of death by water and a want that lasted a thousand years.

* * *

When Touya was thirty-nine, old enough to know better, he played a title match against Shindou on May 5th.

The scheduling department at the Go Institute would be angry at Touya for ages after this. They had had to scramble to make the match happen because Touya made his request only a week before the end of April. It was ridiculous.

But Touya insisted ("My schedule is so full, you see"), and though he might be called arrogant by the world he did not care. Because this opportunity came but once every five years and he knew that time was not forgiving.

He knew because he had seen the state his father was in when he had visited him last, on one of the days when his father had been strong enough to play a game of Go.

At some point during yose, Touya Kouyo had asked, "Do you believe in ghosts?"

Touya had nearly dropped a stone.

"Don't look so surprised, Akira. I am old enough to think of such things. So many of the people I know have died or will die soon. Yet sometimes they feel more familiar to me than the living world does." He had looked at his thin arm lying on the shroud of white sheets. An IV drip fed clear fluid into his blood. "There are people I want to play again who are no longer in this world." 

Touya had thought of the nights when his father used to wait in front of a goban for a ghost who would never come. On nights like those he had wondered if his father had been a retainer in the emperor's court in a previous life, someone who waited with the patience of loyalty.

But after so many years of hunting ghosts, Touya had come to understand that time was not forgiving, and he had told his father: "I believe in ghosts, but only the kind that can be caught."

The next day he had called the Go Institute to arrange a match with Shindou on May 5th. And when the match was over they bowed to each other and said, "Thank you for the game."

Touya imagined that the ghost bowed as well.

* * *

Touya was forty-four when he finally caught Shindou's ghost. He was also forty-four when he finally remembered the story of Fujiwara no Sai.

He remembered the story had begun with "once upon a time" but had not ended with "happily ever after." He remembered that his mother had told it to him forty years ago, long before her hair had turned white and longer still before she had buried her husband. He remembered how, when he was four years old, he had asked her, "Was Fujiwara no Sai our ancestor?"

Her laugh had been gentle. "No, we were not part of the Fujiwara clan."

"Then why do we know this story and no one else does?"

"I think one of our ancestors must have been a retainer to a noble in the court, and he passed down the story to his daughter, who passed it down to her son, and so on."

"Why?" 

His mother had smiled.

"It's what a retainer does."

Touya remembered Fujiwara no Sai, who reminded him of the Internet player Sai, whom he saw in Shindou, who was still a mystery.

He remembered a thirteen year old boy who had said, "If you keep chasing my ghost, the real me is gonna catch up to you some day."

He remembered to look for Shindou's ghost every five years, though the times in between were so very long to wait.

He remembered a promise that had been made and he wondered, not for the first time, if Shindou would ever remember to share his secrets.

He wondered if his father had known the story of Fujiwara no Sai, or if that was a secret his mother had chosen to share with her son alone. He wondered if he would be the only one to remember Fujiwara no Sai in the end.

Touya was sick of ghosts and secrets.

So after twenty-five years of haunting, he asked:

"Shindou...have you ever heard the story of Fujiwara no Sai?"

Instantly the ghost vanished.

-End-

* * *

Author's Notes:

The number four signifies death to the Japanese, I believe. Touya is forty-four at the end of the story.


End file.
